How to Change the System

Hungry for more after the first story in our series on teacher placement? Here is more to chew on:

• If you want to review the actual survey we gave to principals, click here. If you’re curious for more, I’ll be taking your questions tomorrow on how the series was reported as The People’s Reporter.
• My editor posed an interesting question to me: If San Diego Unified decided to change the system, what would it have to do? There are a few possible steps. The school board could decide to renegotiate the transfer rules in the teachers contract, which would mean sitting down at the bargaining table with a proposal. But that wouldn’t be enough to end the problems, because the system isn’t actually spelled out in the contract. The rub is that even when the union has agreed to extra hiring freedoms, the school district has sometimes violated its own rules and forced schools to take teachers. So this isn’t a problem that can be solved by just changing the rules. Preventing forced hiring would also mean enforcing the existing rules — and any new ones — more effectively. Principals would need training in how the rules work so they could catch mistakes. State laws also impact the hiring process, and could be another way to change the system. California has already passed a law to try to deal with this. We’ll have more on that — and why it hasn’t solved all the problems — in our second story. And we’ll look at how another school system actually changed its rules.

What do you think? Is it worth changing the system? And if so, how? Post your thoughts and questions here at Schooled.

— EMILY ALPERT